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Perhapablog

Thursday, March 05, 2009

the play's the thing

okay...

hi, perhapa-gang~!

well, since all i can really think of right now is whether the puppet spot is gonna move slow/smooth enough for amy's monologue or whether alyshia will be able to relax enough to realize that she KNOWS her lines, or that i set the music cues right or that we need a real champagne bottle...

i'm gonna hit you up with two creepy stories that i read late last night over on your true tales at about.com

YOUR TRUE TALES

Skinless Yellow-Eyed CreatureBY STYLES M.By Stephen Wagner, About.com

This occurrence took place in Phoenix, Arizona in the mid-1990s. The story was told to me by one of my best friends. He was out at a party on the south side of Phoenix. If you lived there, you know that once the sunset it really got dark. While at the party, he could hear a police siren in the distance. Being from Phoenix, this was a common back then due to gang activity. So paying it no mind, the night dragged on.

But he felt surprise that now he could hear more and more sirens in the distance. Not only cop cars but fire engines. He thought it could be a car chase or something like that happening. Not having a good time and tired, he left the party.

This is where it gets crazy! Not being a drinker nor a story teller, he stated, "I was heading north on 7th St. about 2 a.m. As I approached Basline Rd., I could see to my left a line of cop cars racing at high speeds going south on Central Ave. On Basline Rd., there were no cars around that late at night. Then I saw what look like a child cross the road into the median into the bushes. I slowed to a stop and rolled down my window. What I saw scared the hell out of me!

"It looked like a small kid around three feet tall. But its glowing eyes where big and yellow. Its skin color I couldn't tell due to the darkness. It had no hair and its mouth was very small. It looked at me like it was frightened. Scared out of my mind, I took off looking back. I saw it run from the bushes across the street. I could also see what look like swarm of cops coming up from Central Ave to where I was just at."

Like I mentioned, this friend of mine is no storyteller. He's often quiet and keeps to himself.

Cornfield CreatureBY FRANK SEMKOBy Stephen Wagner, About.com

I used to work at a cheese factory on the edge of a cornfield in southwestern Minnesota. There were a series of days in the summer of '04 or '05 where it was so hot that the milk being delivered to us in trucks would evaporate before we got it. It made work easy; the dearth of milk denied us any actual labor, but management wouldn't let us not come to work, so we would show up and mess around all shift.

I was working nights at the time. It was 2 or 3 a.m., and I was out on the loading dock watching bats fly around the floodlights, because I liked being out in the cool night air. The corn was about as high as my shoulder, so about 5'10.

As I was watching the bats, I looked down at the edge of the cornfield. Something was moving there. It was the size of a small child and very, very skinny. Pale, with something that looked like a head of straight, black hair. It moved in a sort of jerky gait, like someone dancing the robot badly. It moved in chunks: legs, then hips, then torso, shoulders, neck and finally head. It was looking back into the cornfield, or at least I felt like it was.

I felt prickly all over. I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a heron or something at first, but it looked too much like a person. It didn't move like a person, though. Gradually, step by step, it moved toward me. Letting my curiosity better my fear, I moved toward the edge of the dock, which was raised a few feet off the ground to connect with semis. When I got within a few feet of the edge, the thing looked at me. I was paralyzed. I could have run, but I was stuck somewhere between terrified and intrigued.

It moved, its "face" still pointed at me. It ratcheted its body in that disconcerting, jerky movement toward the cornfield and went into it. I tried to watch where the field moved as it passed, but the corn remained perfectly still. I noticed that all the crickets were silent. After a few minutes, nothing happened. I stood out there for an hour, but it never came back. I never saw it again.

there are some people who can do that "pop and lock" so very precise that it can be unsettling. i've seen it on tv and in a few commercials and now they're starting to use it more in horror films. it's just so creepy.

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i'm in the creepy mood 'cause, aside from going over and over the script for the play, the only other thing i've been reading this week has been the new showcase house of mystery vol.3! i love 'em, i love 'em, i LOVE 'EM! i just cannot get enough of those old 70's horror tales! this volume features a lot of the filipino artists who arrived on joe orlando's doorstep in the late 60's early 70's to make his job so much easier; nestor redondo, alex nino, er cruz. some truly haunting work on some eerily chilling tales! go get some!

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and here are your"three for thursday"

1. what shakespeare play is considered by actors to be bad luck if mentioned onstage or backstage and so has been given the non de dramatis "the m-word"?

2. what, actually, does "break a leg" mean?

3. stage right and stage left are fairly well-kn own terms in the real word, but do they refer to perspective of the actor or the audience?

4. is "upstage" toward the front of the stage or the back?

5. what is the name of the single bare light bulb that is left burning center stage day and night when no performance is taking place?

5 comments:

1. Since you are actually doing a play right now, I will only call it "The Scottish Play," just in case. It also gave rise to the nickname, "The day the ghost walks" for payday in the theatre. As legend has it, the actor playing the ghost in "The Scottish Play" had not been paid on time and threatened to walk off the play if he did not get his money.

2. Good Luck. (Because to wish one of you extremely superstitious actors good luck is supposed to be bad luck.)

If I remember my h.s. history teacher correctly, "Break a leg" originated from when John Wilkes Booth leapt from the balcony after shooting Lincoln and broke his leg. Seems odd to use it for "good luck", but that's what I heard many, many years ago.

1. Macbeth2. Good luck! (Since wishing good luck might jinx it.)3. Actor, I think.4. Back. (Which is why, when you walk behind someone so that they have to turn their back to the audience to talk to you, you're upstaging them.)5. Stage light? I'm not sure about this one.

Great stories, one of these days i'll get to check out that site and i still have a ton of coast to coasts i downloaded to listen to-all kinds of crazy stuff i tell ya! although its mostly older ones....

And hope the play goes off great-i'm sure it will it's in great hands-if i lived in the area i'd be all about checking it out!